In The News

Yesterday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the decision to prohibit the use of third party settlements. As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Goodlatte has lead the committee’s investigation into the Obama Administration’s mortgage lending settlements and has introduced legislation to bar the DOJ, and all other government agencies, from requiring defendants to donate money to outside groups as part of their settlement agreements with the federal government. Today, a...
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-Mich.) joined C-SPAN Newsmakers to discuss the bipartisan Policing Strategies Working Group and the Committee’s efforts to reform our nation’s criminal justice system. C-SPAN’s co-CEO Susan Swain moderated the interview and Kimbriell Kelly of the Washington Post and Jesse Holland of the Associated Press interviewed Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Member Conyers. “We are working hard to try to promote a dia...
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By Rachel Cisto BROADWAY — Nelson Showalter has owned the Broadway Drug Mart since 1987, when he purchased the business from his father. Over nearly 30 years, Showalter has built up a loyal customer base, but as he explained to U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, on Monday, the cost of some prescription drugs might make that base harder to maintain. Goodlatte visited the Broadway pharmacy one day before the House Judiciary Committee begins a series of hearings on competition in health care. Good...
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By Representative Bob Goodlatte Starting this month, thousands of federal inmates are set to be released early from federal prison, including serious violent felons and criminal aliens. This action is not the result of legislation passed by the people’s elected representatives in Congress. Rather, it is a result of a decision made by unelected officials appointed to the United States Sentencing Commission. In early 2014, the Sentencing Commission adopted an amendment to reduce the sentences for ...
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By Kaley Toy FRONT ROYAL – An ITFederal groundbreaking ceremony was held at the former Avtex Fibers site on Monday afternoon. U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said, this is a “new era for economic development.” The $40 million project located on 30 acres of the former Superfund site on Kendrick Lane, near the EDA building in Front Royal, is anticipated to bring about 600 new jobs to the area. “Hundreds are expected to be working here,” Goodlatte said. This was a long process, Goodlatte added, tha...
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By Editorial Board In recent years, colleges and universities have come under tremendous pressure from a wide array of sources, from the federal Education Department to student activists on campus, that has led them to ride roughshod over the constitutional right to free speech. Far too many public institutions have adopted campus speech codes that restrict not only where and when members of the community can speak freely to small “free-speech zones,” but also sharply curtail what they can say. ...
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By Maggie Ybarra The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee wants U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to answer detailed questions about the 89 drug offenders to whom President Obama has granted clemency. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, and 18 other committee Republicans say they are deeply concerned that Mr. Obama has been using his pardon power to benefit specific classes of offenders. They listed their concerns about the presidential pardons, which they say appear to be going to a...
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By Senator Patrick Leahy and Representative Bob Goodlatte For the past nine years, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act has been used by the National Security Agency as legal authority to indiscriminately collect Americans' telephone records into a massive, secret database. Americans were outraged when they learned that billions of their phone records were stocked away in a government database – especially when national security experts examined the program and concluded that it was not essential ...
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By Representatives Bob Goodlatte and Kevin Brady Tax Day — a day that more Americans hate than any other — has come and gone. The recent scandals and bureaucratic bungling by the Internal Revenue Service have so angered the public that cries to "Abolish the IRS" trigger enthusiastic applause at political rallies and have become popular bumper stickers all over the country. Americans rightly gripe about taxes and lawmakers from left to right tout their commitment to tax reform, and occasionally e...
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By Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) Recently, a federal appeals court ruled that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection program is not authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. This court ruling confirms what we’ve been saying all along: bulk collection of data is not authorized under the law and is not accepted by the American people. It also reaffirms that a straight reauthorization of the bulk collection program, as some have proposed, is not a choice ...
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